


My Thoughts Are Shattered

by Cr1mson5theStranger



Series: When My Mind Fades [3]
Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Brain Cancer, Gen, Terminal Illnesses, Terminal Tadashi, crossposted to tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 16:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3388655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cr1mson5theStranger/pseuds/Cr1mson5theStranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bright and vivid was the light that filled his field of vision, and the force with which he was thrown backward was like a punch in the chest from one of Yama’s many thugs. Being airborne was a peculiar sensation that lasted only a few seconds, weightlessness abruptly shifting into the impact of his wiry frame with the ground. His head cracked against the concrete, and there was momentary darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Thoughts Are Shattered

The moments following the explosion were the clearest Hiro had ever experienced.

Bright and vivid was the light that filled his field of vision, and the force with which he was thrown backward was like a punch in the chest from one of Yama’s many thugs. Being airborne was a peculiar sensation that lasted only a few seconds, weightlessness abruptly shifting into the impact of his wiry frame with the ground. His head cracked against the concrete, and there was momentary darkness.

He blinked awake, uncertain of how long he had been sprawled on the pavement. Heat and bright red-orange light seared at his back, and he rolled over listlessly onto his back. Before him lay the remnants of the exhibition hall, engulfed in flames that stretched up and licked angrily at the night sky. Thick towers of smoke coiled up from the decimated structure as ashes and soot settled over the surrounding area. Hiro felt his chest begin to heave with labored, frightened breaths. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Tadashi had run into the building, had gone to save the professor. He couldn’t have perished.

He had to be alive.

Hiro vaulted to his feet, screaming out his brother’s name. Tadashi’s ball cap—San Fransokyo Ninjas, his favorite team, his favorite hat—lay forgotten on the ground. Hiro coughed roughly and spat out a mouthful of ash, stumbling forward toward the smoldering ruins. All the while, he yelled for Tadashi, refusing to allow reality to sink its claws into his mind. Tadashi was alright. He had to be. Tadashi had survived brain cancer; he could survive  _anything_.

Sirens shrieked as police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances roared onto SFIT’s campus, but Hiro heard them as if from a great distance. All that mattered in that fiery eternity of stunted progress toward the wreckage was Tadashi. He was the anchor that kept Hiro grounded, the rock that he held to when the world rushed around him too much to fathom. He was the closest thing to a father Hiro had ever known, and the possibility of his being dead simply did not compute.

Hiro tripped and fell onto his hands and knees on the broken steps. Shattered glass bit into his skin, but the pain barely registered. He pushed himself clumsily back to his feet and continued on toward the fire, crying out, “Tadashi!” His voice, which echoed strangely around the inside of his skull, sounded strained and desperate. People were shouting behind him, but he ignored them, drowned them out with the force of his determination. Tadashi was all that mattered. A large, strong hand gripped his arm and yanked him backward, and he jerked back against the forceful hold.

Hiro’s memory of the next week was painfully fragmented.

*

_The police come to the door late at night. Hiro wakes to an odd commotion that stirs uneasiness in the pit of his small stomach. There are voices downstairs, at the door, and he lays awake in bed listening to the muffled sounds of two unfamiliar men speaking with the babysitter. He hears her choke something out, hears the men in the entryway say something vaguely comforting. He starts to feel gradually more afraid._

_Sheets rustle above him, the top bunk creaks, and feet begin descending the ladder steadily. Hiro sits up in the bottom bunk, hair matted from sleep and eyes wide with worsening dread. “Dashi?” he whispers through the darkness._

_The slight figure at the door pauses for a moment. The door is open just a crack. A streak of black hair shines blue in the light from the hallway, a single brown eye visible from Hiro’s position. “I’ll be right back,” Tadashi assures him. “I’m just going to see what’s going on.”_

_Tadashi slips out the door and pulls it to behind him, leaving Hiro in the shadows of their shared room. Hiro’s mind suddenly quiets, and he leans forward on the bunk, listening to Tadashi’s footsteps patter down the stairs. The policemen murmur something downstairs. The babysitter begins crying. Tadashi doesn’t come back._

_Hiro scrambles down off his bed, his feet hitting the floor with a hard thump. It’s always a longer distance than he thinks it will be. He scampers out the door and down the stairs of the townhome with all the grace of a baby bird learning to fly, nearly toppling headlong into the living room a few times in his rush._

_Tadashi is clinging to the babysitter’s side. Her arms are wrapped around him and she’s crying, sobbing with shoulders heaving and breaths hitching. Tadashi turns abruptly to look at Hiro, and—and his face is streaked with tears. His eyes are puffy and red. Two policemen stand in the entryway, looking professionally sorrowful. One of them steps around Tadashi and the babysitter and kneels down to be at eye level with Hiro. “Hey, kiddo,” he says gently, “what’s your name?”_

_Hiro feels shyness constrict his throat and chest. “H-Hiro,” he stammers, quietly and uncertainly._

_The officer smiles at him sympathetically. “Is Tadashi your big brother, Hiro?”_

_Hiro gives a tiny nod._

_A large, strong hand settles on Hiro’s slender little shoulder, dwarfing it, dwarfing_ him _in the sudden weight of something going horribly wrong. “I…wish I didn’t have to tell you this, buddy, but…there was an accident, and your mom and dad had to go away for a while.”_

_Hiro knows about hospitals. He knows about doctors and nurses and medicine and the funny-looking greenish gowns they put you in when you have an emergency. Why is Tadashi crying when the doctors are taking care of Mom and Dad, he wonders? He blinks at the officer. “When are they coming back?”_

_Tadashi lets out a strangled sob and falls to his knees. The officer glances back at him, briefly, before explaining to Hiro, “They’re not coming back, Hiro. Where they went…they can’t come back from that place. I’m so sorry.”_

_The constriction in his chest is due to something else now._

*

The pillow beneath his head was soft, but his skull still felt like it had taken a hammer blow.

It was one of the few memories Hiro retained of the week following the fire. He recalled waking up in a hospital room, coughing and sputtering and resenting the sharp pain in his head.  _Concussion,_  he thought to himself, and then promptly decided not to think anymore. Thinking was painful, too.

A hand, warm and soft, tightened around his own. “Hiro, baby, are you awake?”

Hiro blinked a few times—the lights were bright and hard to focus around—and let his head fall to the right. “Aunt Cass,” he said dully.

She lurched forward with a sob and wrapped her arms around him. Her entire body trembled with the force of her weeping, and every few seconds her shoulders twitched violently with a choked hiccup. Hiro reached up weakly to hug her back, grimacing at the tug of the IV in his left hand, and assured her, “I’m okay, Aunt Cass.”

Aunt Cass let out a short, strained wail and petted the back of his head softly, almost obsessively around the bandages and the sore spot. Hiro squeezed her, briefly, and repeated, “I’m okay, Aunt Cass. Where’s Tadashi? Did they get him out?”

Hiro could only have described the feeling in that moment, when Aunt Cass offered not words but a wordless shriek and intensified sobs, as that of his heart icing over and ceasing to beat. It became as lead then, and sank into the pit of his churning stomach. He wanted to tear the offending organ from his chest and defy the entire universe in all its cruelty. It must have been his heart; yes, that was the problem. His heart was simply too paranoid, too afraid, and if he rid himself of it, he would see things clearly again. But, as it were, his heart refused to be ignored, and his mind raced with all the many ways that he could be misinterpreting Aunt Cass’s reaction.

“H-he’s…he’s not…” Hiro’s chest began to heave again with labored breaths as he fought to get the words off his tongue. “He’s not gone. He can’t be. T-Tadashi is okay, Aunt Cass, he’s okay, he’s just stuck in the rubble and if they keep looking, they’ll find him, they’ll find him and—”

Aunt Cass pulled him closer, and he fell silent. Hot, salty tears breached his brown eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He wrenched his eyes closed, hoping to cut them off, and clenched his hands tightly in Aunt Cass’s shirt. “I-I don’t want him to b-be gone,” Hiro stammered. “W-why did he have to l-leave?”

Aunt Cass’s hand found his hair again, stroking and smoothing it down. Whether it was for his comfort or hers he was uncertain. “I don’t know, baby,” she admitted, her voice thick from crying and heavy with grief. “I just don’t know.”

Hiro didn’t know how long the two of them spent like that, clinging tightly to one another and bawling uncontrollably. The more he thought about it, the more he found that he didn’t really care. Tadashi was dead. What else was left to do?

*

_“Kindergarten’s that way, kid!”_

_It isn’t a very good insult—Hiro is eight years old and can think of more scathing things to say than that—but it still stings a bit. He keeps his head down while he stuffs his things into his backpack and zips it up. As long as he doesn’t look at them, the rude boys and the false concern of his classmates will vanish. Like magic, he thinks, the card tricks Dad used to show them. As long as his eyes are turned away, he won’t see the mechanism behind the magic as they stride off, chuckling, and shut the door. He’ll only look up, and they’ll be gone, the same as every day._

_A familiar presence, larger and warmer than Hiro and radiating gentle strength, settles in front of him. He feels a hand fall on his shoulder. “Hey, Hiro, are you okay? What did they say to you?”_

_Hiro shrugs off Tadashi’s hand and hauls his backpack up onto his shoulder. “Just something dumb,” he says, and it’s neither truth nor lie entirely. “It doesn’t matter.”_

_Tadashi purses his lips. “Well, it matters to me,” he asserts matter-of-factly. “You don’t deserve to be treated that way just because they don’t like that you’re smarter than them.”_

_Hiro offers a small, wavering, gap-toothed smile in response. “It’ll be okay, nii-san. They go away if I don’t say anything.”_

_Tadashi stretches out his hand, and Hiro takes it without a second thought. “Maybe so, but you shouldn’t have to stay quiet all the time. It’s okay to tell them to stop.”_

_“It won’t make them do it,” Hiro scoffs._

_Tadashi gives him a sad smile. “Yeah, it won’t,” he agrees, “but at least they’ll know that you aren’t just going to take it lying down.” They emerge from the doors of the junior high together, and Aunt Cass waves to them from her beat-up old truck. Hiro raises a hand to wave back, but the motion is cut off as Tadashi ruffles his hair and Hiro feels compelled to swat at his older brother’s hand. “Aunt Cass is taking us to get ice cream today, since you did so well on that test.”_

_In a flash, Hiro has broken away from Tadashi’s grip and is racing toward Aunt Cass’s truck, grinning wildly. “Sweet!”_

*

There came a day, about a week after the fire, that Hiro awoke to realize that there was a gap in his memory.

He could guess from the amount of sunlight filtering into the room from the window above his bed, the curtains over which had been haphazardly drawn, that it was either midday or early afternoon. He yawned and stretched, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It felt remarkably like any normal lazy day at home, with Aunt Cass letting him take a day to himself and Tadashi already gone for his afternoon class, and Hiro basked in the feeling until something in his brain snapped to, and he remembered.

Any energy that had been building up in Hiro’s young frame seeped out through the pores in his now-clammy skin and the shaky sigh that left his lips. His shoulders sank, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. Tadashi was dead. He had been dead for—Hiro wasn’t certain how long it had been at that point. He wasn’t certain that it even mattered. But he was exasperated with himself, with his mind for playing these tricks every day. Hiro had watched the exhibition hall explode with his own eyes. Aunt Cass had confirmed Tadashi’s fate with her cries. The police had come to the café…hadn’t they? Hiro squinted at his sheets, digging for the memories. That seemed right, but there was nothing in the reserves of his mind to support it.

Hiro shook his head once, quickly and to himself. Whether the police had come to the café or not, the doctors had said…something about it. And…and the firefighters had, as well, they had all said something about the scene, about recovering remains. Hadn’t they? Yet again his memory held no answer for him.

It was immaterial, Hiro decided firmly. It was superfluous. Tadashi was gone, and Hiro knew it, and he knew it because of the funeral.

Hiro sifted through his memory once more, and then he found himself collapsing backward onto his pillow in tears. There had been a funeral for Tadashi; Hiro was sure of it. People didn’t just go about not commemorating the deceased. He was certain there was a funeral, because a stark black suit lay crumpled into a heap on the floor at the foot of his bed with a sympathy card and a funeral program, written in both English and Japanese, tossed carelessly on top. His brother had been given a proper burial.

But Hiro remembered none of it.

*

_Tadashi keeps as much of a stiff upper lip as he can, being eighteen and told that a tumor is eating away at his brain. Hiro is incapable of processing it; being a twelve-year-old genius does nothing to improve your understanding of people, it would seem. Tadashi, his invincible older brother, has just been told by a medical professional that his own brain has betrayed him. Yet, he flashes Hiro his usual unwavering smile and nods. He’s confident._

_Hiro wishes he could say the same. It makes him feel like an idiot, but the thought that he might lose Tadashi one day never crossed his mind before now. True, he became acquainted with death in close proximity earlier than most, but Tadashi has always been around. Tadashi has always been hovering over Hiro’s shoulder, working across the room, pulling up on his moped to pick him up from school. There’s never been a day of Hiro’s life that hasn’t prominently featured his older brother._

_That night, when Tadashi is asleep, Hiro does what he knows he probably shouldn’t do, what he’s fully aware will only worsen his fears. He opens Google, clicks on Images, and types in his query: “brain tumor”._

_The photos begin the nightmares, which begin the sleepless nights spent fretting over his brother. Hiro tries to hide the tremors in his hands when he writes letters to the school administration, to the student council representatives at their high school, to some of the wealthier patrons of the café. He sets out the “Tips for Tadashi” jar at the register and watches with anticipation when people approach to pay for their food and beverages, hoping that they’ll drop a few coins or bills inside. The jar itself rakes in quite a bit of money, once Aunt Cass explains to curious patrons that it’s going to pay for her nephew’s cancer surgery, but it still isn’t enough. There are thousands of dollars they need to come up with to pay the treatments down, and a jar at the cash register isn’t helping Hiro help his brother much._

_Hiro gathers up the sketches of fighting bots he’s been working on under Tadashi’s nose and carts them out to their makeshift workshop in the garage. Bot-fighting, technically speaking, is not illegal; betting on a bot fight most certainly is. But Hiro is an exceptionally smart boy, and he isn’t able to consider all the potential detriments of this particular illegal activity. All that matters is that bot-fighting will make him plenty of money, and Tadashi’s treatment requires plenty of money._

*

Hiro had begun to believe that Tadashi had intentionally programmed Baymax to be a smartass.  Either that or the robotic healthcare companion was so endearingly literal that it caused Hiro physical pain—he had run faster, longer, and farther in that day than he had ever run in his entire life. That, of course, didn’t cover climbing, jumping, sliding, crawling, and falling, though falling was probably not strictly physical exertion so much as emotional distress. And as Hiro labored to get Baymax up the stairs to his charging station without Aunt Cass noticing, he glared up at the plush robot and thought icily, _Goddamn it, I didn’t even mean to activate you._

Baymax’s drunken mutterings were met with little response from Hiro, who was more focused on guiding the robot to his charging station than replying to him. Once Baymax was situated and inflating, Hiro took a few dragging steps backward and fell backward onto his bed. His body was utterly wearied, but his mind was frantic. He removed the microbot from his pocket and held it up in the light for closer examination, frowning at the smooth gray metal. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he murmured, mostly to himself. He half-expected some divine being to descend from the heavens with opened arms and enlighten him, but that was mostly the confusion talking, he supposed. The mask that the man in black wore was burned into his mind’s eye, glaring at him with yellow eyes and fierce red stripes like gashes in pearl-white skin. Who the man could possibly have been, what he wanted with the microbots, how he got hold of the schematics for them…Hiro knew none of it. He let his hand drop to his stomach and closed his eyes. Things would be clearer in the morning, he thought with a sigh.

“Tadashi.”

Hiro startled at Baymax’s sudden vocalization. He opened his eyes and sat up, brow furrowing in befuddlement. “What?” he said.

Baymax was full of air again, round head turned to gaze intently at Tadashi’s vacant half of the room. “Tadashi,” the robot repeated.

Hiro exhaled deeply. He had already relived the fire once today, faced with the invention he had thought destroyed. He had no desire to relive it again in conversation with his brother’s proudest achievement. He trudged over to the divider and grasped it a little more tightly than necessary. “Tadashi’s gone.”

If Baymax caught the low, melancholy tone of Hiro’s voice, he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he tilted his head slightly to the right and inquired, “When will he return?”

Hiro sucked in a trembling breath and counted inwardly to ten.  _Don’t blow up. Don’t blow up._ “He’s dead, Baymax,” he curtly replied.

There was a moment of pause in which Baymax seemed to be gathering his words. Something inside the robot whirred softly. “Did his cancer progress more rapidly than expected?”

Hiro froze. His knees locked up, his shoulders going tense and his core tightening as though in preparation to flee. It had to be a glitch, he decided, Baymax confusing Tadashi’s medical history for a diagnosis. Still, though, he couldn’t stop the question forming on his tongue from slipping past his lips: “W-what do you mean?”

Baymax blinked. The screen on his chest—a scale of one to ten, Hiro thought weakly—lit up with a diagram of a human brain and spinal cord. Portions of it glowed red, and others purple. A legend to one side of the diagram stated that red regions were cancerous and purple were projected areas into which the cancer would spread. “I diagnosed Tadashi with glioblastoma multiforme, grade IV,” Baymax reported. “Without chemotherapy and radiation therapy, he should have lived for five months. Did his cancer progress more rapidly than expected?”

Hiro had never before felt blood drain from his face, and it was a sensation he hoped never to experience again. His hand rose to clutch at his chest as he lowered himself to the floor. His mind processed nothing after that, not Baymax’s concerned repetitions of “you have fallen” and not Aunt Cass’s calls from downstairs, and nothing reached him but the illuminated diagram on Baymax’s chest of the infected regions of Tadashi’s nervous system.


End file.
